


a bullet just to meet you

by petalloso



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Spider-Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14631822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalloso/pseuds/petalloso
Summary: “You mean grab me and swing me around like Tarzan and Jane?”“Exactly.”Keith looks a bit incredulous. Lance would like to ensure him of the safety of swinging from building to building, but he’s not entirely sure as to if it really was safe at all. Probably not. But he would never let anything happen to him, would in fact catch him on the way down if the situation called for it. He says as much.“That’s… not exactly reassuring. I’d prefer not to be falling in the first place.”





	a bullet just to meet you

**Author's Note:**

> /shrugi emoji/ 
> 
> tw; bad thoughts, slight violence involving: robberies, gunshot/blood, building collapse/young girl 
> 
> hmu @petalloso.tumblr.com if u have any q's

Lance feels like he just took a bullet to the gut. Of course, the feeling might be on account that he has, but he doesn’t think it’s hit anything major. Only because it went clean through, and because he hasn’t passed out yet.

It hurts like hell, but surprisingly it’s not the worst feeling ever, and definitely beats the time the giant birdman clawed his chest open. That one took almost a week to heal, even with his ultra convenient ultra fast healing capabilities.

He lands squarely on the fire exit of his apartment building. Too loudly. Aunt Maitea is a light sleeper, something which is highly inconvenient given the nature of Lance’s extracurriculars. He’s good at tiptoeing though, and wrenches the window to his bedroom open, climbing backwards inside as he pulls off his mask.

“The fuck?”

Lance hits his head on the top of the window. For a second it hurts worse than the profusely bleeding wound on his torso, and then the pain fades and his brain is slowly realizing that there definitely shouldn’t be another voice in his room, unless someone’s broken in, in which case they shouldn’t sound so absolutely appalled by his presence. He turns to get a better view of the probably-not-a-burglar.

“Oh,” he says, softly and just a little surprised. Wrong room. Wrong building, as it turns out. He’s got enhanced vision, enhanced senses, enhanced everything, and he landed on the wrong apartment building, opened the window to the wrong room, and climbed into a stranger’s home. Maybe it’s the blood loss.

There’s a boy standing there, a few feet away in nothing but boxers and sushi-printed socks (from Target probably, Lance thinks). He’s got a mess of dark hair and unfairly pretty eyes, which is besides the point really. He also looks mildly confused. Mildly is a good level of confusion, though. Lance can work with mildly.   

His vision blurs a moment, head spinning like a relentless spinning top. He leans onto the wall behind him to balance himself and draws his hand away from where it’s pressing hard into his torso. The blood is darker than the red of his hand-crafted suit, and there’s a lot of it.

“You,” he starts, turning his attention back to the definitely-not-a-burglar and pressing his hand back to the wound, a little out of breath. “You really should lock your window.”

The boy looks slightly offended at the suggestion. “I didn’t expect someone to come crawling through it,” he points out. “We’re on the highest floor, dude.”

“Right,” Lance says. He slips a little off the wall but rights himself. The boy notices anyhow, his brows scrunching up in a way that looks like he could be concerned but could also be about the fact that Lance is probably smearing blood all over his walls. It’s kind of cute either way. He’s kind of cute. He’s also seen Lance’s face. Which is not ideal.

“You’re bleeding,” he observes quite obviously, and steps a little closer. Lance doesn’t stop him for some reason. Maybe because he doesn’t have the energy to move much. He feels about to collapse actually, like his failed engineering project in sixth grade. C minus from Mrs. Guerrera. She never really did like him.   

“Do you,” Lance starts, and then coughs, a little wet and typically, in front of a cute civilian who’s room he’s just accidentally mistook for his own, a little disgustingly. He thinks there might be blood on the carpet, which is white and fluffy. He ought to buy some stain remover for the guy later. Or recommend hydrogen peroxide and some cold water. From experience, it worked better than hot on blood stains.

“Do you have any kleenex?” He finishes.

“Kleenex?”

“Yeah, for the bleeding, you know?” On second thought a towel might work better than a box of tissues, but he already owes him stain remover.

“You’re… oh my god. Just- just come here.”

Except he doesn’t really give Lance the chance to, because suddenly he’s closed that small distance between them and is pulling Lance’s arm around his shoulder, leading him to his bed and helping him sit so his back is against the frame. He quickly stuffs a pillow behind him to cushion his back.

“Wait here for a second. Don’t pass out.”

Lance can only nod, staring dumbly up at him and his weirdly colored eyes and weirdly long eyelashes, and then he’s running off somewhere and shutting the door quietly behind him. He takes the opportunity to study the room he’s broken into. And also try not to pass out.

It’s nice. A little sparse for decor, but quite nice. He’s got a row of succulents on a desk in the corner. They seem very green and alive, which is more than Lance ever could keep his. There are several books scattered on the surface too, most of which seem to be chemistry related, and a laptop open to a youtube lecture that’s still playing, headphones plugged in. He probably interrupted the guy’s studying, which makes him feel a little more guilty than he already does. It kind of makes his chest constrict.

There is also a spiderman figurine next to his lamp. Lance smiles at that and then the door swings opens. The kid steps through, holding several towels, a pitcher of water, and gauze in his arms. The setup looks a little precarious in his arms, like he’s very close to dropping something, but he doesn’t seem too concerned as he steps into the room and kicks the door closed.

He spots Lance’s fading smile and follows his previous line of vision to the figurine. The way his cheeks flush shouldn’t be so endearing, but Lance can’t seem to look away from the color. Somehow he is able to get a free hand to swipe at the figurine, toppling little Lance over before making his way back to actual Lance by the bed.

“It was a gift,” he explains, cheeks still that rosy tint, kneeling down beside him and settling, cross legged, onto the mattress.

“Sure,” Lance says with a grin.

The boy hums, and then reaches over and gently pries Lance’s hand away from the wound, replacing it with a white towel that soaks red quickly. It’s a lot of blood, Lance thinks. He should stop bleeding soon, but still, it was weird to see.

“How’d you get this?”

Lance winces a bit at the added pressure. “I, uh, knocked this guy out by slamming his head against a counter with some web to his forehead. He sort of still had his hand on the trigger. I don’t even know if he meant to shoot it. I should have maybe gone for the gun first. Lucky he didn’t hit anyone.”

“He hit you, didn’t he?” The boy says, meeting his gaze. It looks a bit like a challenge, the way he looks at him. Lance swallows, which hurts his dry throat and aching chest. The symptoms of a bullet wound to the torso seem to overlap quite nicely with those of a flu. Lance wonders if he could just take some tylenol later and knock out for the night.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, it’s fine. It’ll heal.”

“Yeah, yeah, superhuman healing factor or whatever. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

It does hurt. Incredibly so, actually. He figures he should probably have better pain tolerance, given his line of unpaid, technically illegal work, but also maybe he could give himself a break when it came to bullets to the flesh. “How’d you know about the healing?” He asks.

“You were out stopping four armed robberies the day after that weird lizard hybrid nearly killed you a few months ago.” He seems to realize what he’s just said and flushes a little darker. “I mean… it was on the news. Also, you’ve stopped bleeding.”

“Oh,” Lance says, forcing his eyes away from the boy and back to his torso. He has indeed stopped breathing. Bleeding. The boy takes the towel away, picks up another and dips it in the water pitcher, bringing it back up to wipe away the blood that’s caked grossly to Lance’s skin.  

“Can you maybe take this off?”

“What?”

“Your suit. It’s in the way.”

“Oh.” Right. It’s really more of a modified hoodie that an actual suit, but he appreciates the boy’s recognition anyway. It would hurt to pull over his head though, and is already sort of extremely ruined, so he uses two hands to rip the hole from the bullet a little wider instead, exposing most of the upper half of his body. The boy’s gaze flickers over his exposed torso quickly, eyes widening ever so slightly before he’s pressing the wet towel back to the wound, cleaning the blood away.

He cleans it pretty quickly, then grabs the roll of gauze and unrolls it. “Lean forward,” he says, and Lance does, feeling the boy’s fingers work to wrap the bandages around his torso and against the bullet wound. It hurts a little less now, but he still winces at the tightening of the gauze. The boy’s hands linger a little longer than technically necessary, but neither of them say anything about it.

“Done,” he announces, letting his hands fall to his lap. Lance studies his face for a moment, committing it to memory, just in case he comes across him in public sometime in the future and has to book it out of there or else be outed as a super vigilante. Also because he’s got a really nice face.

Now that Lance isn’t feeling about to pass out, he can really take the time to let it sink in. He’s got hair long enough to pull into a ponytail, dark and sweeping across his forehead prettily. His eyes are dark, but Lance still can’t quite pinpoint the exact color. He’s got a slight pout to his lips, which are red like he’s bitten them out of nervous habit. He’s also not wearing pants, which Lance had previously observed and really can’t fault him for. It’s his room, after all. They’re hippopotamus-printed. He didn’t know they made those. He decides not to point it out.

“Thanks,” he says, meeting the boy’s gaze. “Sorry for interrupting your night. I’m usually more polite when breaking and entering.”

The boy smiles, his eyes scrunching up and twinkling. Cute. “It’s okay. I wasn’t getting anything done anyway.”

“Chemistry?”

“Yeah. The test is tomorrow and I’m pretty much screwed.”

Lance also has a test tomorrow. He has not studied for it. “My condolences.”

“Not dead _yet,_ ” the boy says sternly, though the tug at his lips says he’s more amused by Lance’s quip than anything. “And neither are you. Try to keep it that way, maybe? Your crazy healing won’t work for everything.”

“Everything but heartbreak.”

“Then don’t get your heart broken.”

“I make no promises.”

The boy hums and gets up. “Anyway, I gotta be up in four hours and still don’t know shit about rate laws, so maybe you should head home.”

“Is this me being kicked out?”

“I’d feel bad except it’s my room and you weren’t technically invited.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you that.”

He shrugs his hoodie back on over his shoulders as best he can. There’s not much coverage, but he supposes it’ll have to do. Then he makes his way back to the window from whence he came. The boy watches him go, eyes curious.

Lance perches on the still a moment, his mask in hand, and turns to look at him.

“What’s your name?” He says.

The boy tilts his head a little to the side, looking curiously still at Lance.“What for?”

“Just so I know,” Lance says with a shrug. “You did patch me up. It’d be nice to remember who you were.”

“Okay,” the boy says, and then kind of smiles, but in the tiniest way. “It’s Keith.”

“Keith,” Lance says, letting the name roll off his tongue. “Thank you.”

+

Lance wakes with an aching headache and an alarm blaring into his ear. He distinctly remembers taking a large boulder to the head in yesterday’s fight, which might account for the headache. He shifts in bed and winces at the tug in his gut.

The bandages held. Keith knew what he was doing when he wrapped him up. Lance wonders about that. It doesn’t hurt so much as is uncomfortable, a slight sting when he twists his body. He prods at it with one finger, but decides to let it be.

He checks the time and curses. There is a pair of pants located strategically on the floor beside his bed, which he tugs on as quickly as he can, banging his knee on the bed in the process and cursing again. Armadillo peers at him from his tank across the room. Armadillo is in fact a spotted gecko, but a year ago Lance thought the name would be funny.

“Nothing to worry about, Army,” Lance reassures him. “Just running a bit late.” He goes over to shake up some crickets with calcium powder and deposits them into Armadillo’s tank, taking a moment he really shouldn’t to watch him lick them up. The little suckers never had a chance. He feels a little bit guilty about their demise. Then he trips over a pant leg.

He curses a third time and pulls on a shirt, then checks the time.

Lance had given himself a strict no-swinging-to-school rule upon gaining the ability to, but he also had a test in five minutes, so he created a new rule-- no swinging to school unless there was an emergency. Of the school or of the mortal danger sort.  

He perches on the windowsill, looking out to an already bustling city. Then he pulls on his mask, and swings.

 

“So how’d you do, then?” Hunk asks him an hour and five minutes later. They’re standing by the lockers, waiting for the crowd to pass so as not to get trampled by it.

“Fine, I think.” Maybe.

Hunk pats him sympathetically on the back, somehow knowing his “fine” was likely equivalent to less than good. Lance smiles thankfully at him, and then notices there’s a new presence just beside him, the little hairs on his arms rising in that way they’ve started to at even the smallest of alarming happenings. He rubs his arms.

“Hey, man,” Hunk says cheerfully.

“Hey,” the presence says.

Lance turns to the “hey, man,” and feels his heart leap immediately from his chest and the little hairs stick up impossibly more so. He ignores the empty-chest feeling and the beating of his entire body and pulls on his hoodie, quickly pulling the drawstrings to hide his face. He must look like an idiot. At least it’s a little chilly, so it’s not the weirdest possible thing he could have done.

But it’s Keith. Chemistry Keith. Wrong Apartment Building Keith. Well, technically Lance can’t see his face anymore to fully confirm this to be true, because his own is hidden in hoodie, but he knows it’s The Keith, and also that Hunk is probably looking at him like he’s trying to read his mind, which he does a lot. _You’ve just been so weird latel_ y.

“Uh, buddy?” Hunk says, concerned as he always is, the angel of a man. “You okay?”

“Yeah, buddy. All good. Just,” he coughs dramatically into his fist. “I think I just caught something.” In the span of a second. “I don’t want to spread it. I gotta go. See you later.”

He doesn’t wait for a response. In dire circumstances responses are not a priority. He just leaves, and on his way down the hallway to safety he perks his ears just a little, listening in to the conversation he’s left behind.

“Sorry about that,” Hunk is saying. “It’s not exactly unusual for him. I’ll introduce you guys later and I’m sure it’ll go better…”

No, Hunk. No it will not.

 

 

 

The thing is, as soon as he knows Keith exists on the same plane as Lance and everyone he knows does, Lance can’t seem to catch a break. He sees Keith everywhere, and all the time, and each time his gaze lingers just a little longer that it should before he mentally slaps himself back into focus. With great force.

He sees him in the hallway, headphones in and swaying ever so slightly to whatever is playing into his ears. It’s stupidly endearing, as is the way his hair falls messily into his face, obscuring his vision, and the way his sleeves are just a little too long for him, leaving only the very tips of his fingers peeking out.

He sees him in the cafeteria, sitting with a few people he doesn’t recognize but silently, like he doesn’t really know them either. He’s got exactly one apple and a juice box for lunch, which is clearly not enough. Lance kind of wants to chuck a sandwich at him, but that would most certainly expose him.

As he contemplates this, Keith looks up from his sad, half squished juice box, straw in mouth, right at Lance, like he’d known the entire time he was there. Lance curses and turns just as quickly, but now he can’t stop thinking about how easily he’d made eye contact, how weird the color of his eyes are. He wonders how close he can get without being seen, just to figure out their exact shade. Wonders if he could pick it out from some paint samples at The Home Depot.

He shuffles away, slipping into the crowd of students and out the cafeteria, checking once to ensure no one is following him out. It’s bad. He shouldn’t have crawled into that apartment building and shouldn’t have been recognized. He really doesn’t know what to do.

 

 

Lance loves swimming. He figures he shouldn't. He’s seen the way spiders float, belly up and very dead, in the outdoor swimming pool he frequented during the summer as a kid. There’s a species of water spider called the diving bell, though, and the ones that skim the water on hot summer days like little Jesuses.

He’s pulling on swim trunks that fit too snugly around his waist, but he hasn’t had the time to buy a new pair, so he relents to the tight fit and goes for his goggles, with straps that are tied together in a knot after a break. That’s when he feels it. An ambush.

His arms tingle, goosebumps rising in warning. He really should have seen it coming. It’s just he wasn’t expecting to be ambushed in the locker room.

“You’re avoiding me,” says the voice behind him. It is all too familiar and leaves odd chills down his spine.

“Shit.” He turns around. The Keith is staring at him, arms crossed, very pissed.

“Make some noise won’t you? My heart can’t take your sneaky spy shit.”

Keith presses his palm to Lance’s chest. “Your heart’s fine.”

Lance flushes and swipes his hand away. It falls easily back to his side, Keith himself unperturbed. “Why didn’t you tell me you went to Garrison?”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“I didn’t think to.”

“Well then it’s your own fault.”

“This is…” Crazy. It’s crazy. “Look, dude. You’re the only person who knows. And you go to my school. This is like, a breach of protocol or something.”

“What protocol?” He’s asking genuinely, like he really wants to know. It’s a little adorable. Lance digresses though.

“I don’t know. The super vigilante protocol.”

“There’s no such thing.”

Lance waves a hand dismissively. “I’d mind wipe you men-in-black style but I don’t have that ability, sadly and rather inconveniently. So I’ll just… pinky promise you won’t tell.” He sticks out said pinky in prompt.

“Pinky promise.” Keith deadpans, staring at Lance’s sad outstretched pinky like it’s affronted him. Lance feels a bit judged. “How can I trust your pinky?”

“It’s trustworthy.” He wiggles it for emphasis.

“I’m not going to tell anyone, Lance.”

“You know my name?” He retracts his pinky.

Keith points to his student I.D., which is sitting on the bench beside them in very plain site.

“Fuck.”

“Also Hunk told me. You should be more careful.”

“This is the absolute worst. You’re the worst.”

“Thanks.”

Lance sighs and sticks out his pinky again, wiggling it around. It’s stupid, he knows, but he tends to act so when forced into difficult situations. This, he thinks, qualifies as one.

Keith raises an eyebrow, clearly not impressed by Lance or his sad pinky. But Lance gestures again, and he seems to relent with a small, defeated sigh, curling his pinky around Lance’s.

“Say you promise you won’t tell anyone.”

“You promise you won’t tell anyone.”

“What? No, are you serious?”

“I said it.” He doesn’t even look like he’s _trying_ to be a smartass, which is just weird. Maybe he’s really good at faking it. Lance decides to give him the benefit of the doubt, just this once.

“Say I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

“I promise I won’t tell anyone.” He finishes it like a question, but Lance figures it’s good enough. He releases the pinky.

“You can’t break a pinky promise. It’s sacred. Holy. You’ll be cursed if you do.”

“Right.”

“Don’t doubt me.”

“I don’t.”

This too, he sounds like he means. Lance can appreciate it.

+

It’s not like he means to end up there. It’s just that he’s bored after a few burglaries here and there, a couple errands ran for a nice elderly lady he ran into on the streets. It’s nearing midnight and he doesn’t want to go home, not tired enough to sleep through the night. But he knows the place and he’s bored and he wants company, maybe so he doesn’t have to think so hard about how his body aches and his heart aches worse for reasons he can never place. So he just ends up there, hands and feet stuck to the wall of the twentieth something floor, debating whether or not to knock on the window.

His debate comes to a close after just a few rebuttals thrown back and forth in his head. He unsticks one hand from the wall and taps lightly on the window, peeking inside as he does.

He’s relieved to see Keith is there and not galavanting somewhere at midnight on a school night. He doesn’t seem to have heard the knock, probably on account that he has headphones in and is bumping his head rather violently to whatever is playing in his ears. Lance takes a minute to appreciate the scene. Then knocks again.

Keith’s head stops to the music and he looks abruptly up. He doesn’t look extremely caught off guard that Lance is hanging outside his window many stories up, but his eyes widen slightly as he pulls off his headphones and walks to open the window.

“Spider-boy,” he greets, leaning out the window with one elbow on the sill.

“Good evening,” Lance says, ignoring the “boy,” even though he knows Keith knows better.  

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m bored.”

“So you came here?”

“Yeah.”

Keith tilts his head in that way Lance has found he tends to do when he’s thinking. It makes his hair fall in a certain way. “Take off your mask,” he says after a long moment.  

“Hu? Why?”

“Because it’s weird talking to you like this. Take it off.”

Lance does. And then moves out of the way and watches as Keith climbs out the window onto the fire escape, his headphones still wrapped around his neck.

“I can’t come in?” Lance asks.

“My brother is still awake. He’d probably be curious to know why you’re here if he saw you. So no, you can’t come in.”

“Lame,” Lance says, singsonging the word. But he doesn’t much mind really. Keith doesn’t seem to care what he thinks of the matter anyhow.

“So,” he says. “What exactly do you mean for me to do with you?”

“Are you extremely busy?” Lance asks.

“Yes, very.”  

“Dancing around your room?”

Keith flushes. It could just be the cold air and the gusts of wind that make so his hair frames his face prettily, but Lance would like to think it’s the embarrassment, too. He admires the color of his cheeks, the color of his eyes. Keith doesn’t seem to notice.

“I wasn’t dancing.”

“Fine, head banging.”

He looks like he wants to argue, but they both know there’s no point given it’s the truth. Lance chooses to have mercy and changes the subject.

“I could show you the city.”

“I live here, Lance.”

“No, I mean I could like, show you from up high.”

“You mean grab me and swing me around like Tarzan and Jane?”

“Exactly.”

Keith looks a bit incredulous. Lance would like to ensure him of the safety of swinging from building to building, but he’s not entirely sure as to if it really is safe at all. Probably not. But he would never let anything happen to him, would in fact catch him on the way down if the situation called for it. He says as much.

“That’s… not exactly reassuring. I’d prefer not to be falling in the first place.”

“I won’t drop you. Pinky promise.”

Keith hums. “I guess your pinky is pretty trustworthy.”

“Thank you very much.”

Keith waves a hand like it wasn’t meant to be complimentary, even though Lance thinks it’s the best compliment he’s ever gotten. Or maybe it’s because he’s developed an odd affection for Keith in the short time that he has acquainted with him. He, again, looks a little longer at Keith than necessary, who, again, doesn’t seem to notice the added attention.

Lance is so busy staring like some puppy-eyed oggler that he startles when Keith wraps an arm around his neck, and almost asks what he’s doing until he remembers he’s supposed to be giving him a tour of the city. Keith tilts his neck up to look at him. He’s just a few inches shorter, but it’s enough that Lance has to bend his own a little to look him in the eyes.

“You sure you can carry me?” He asks.

“Oh yeah,” Lance says, wrapping an arm around Keith’s waist, which is smaller than he thought it would feel like. “You’re barely a sack of feathers relative to my strength.”

“Wow, cocky much?”

“It’s not cocky. It’s the truth.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Keith says with a wave of his hand, but he’s wrapping his other arm around Lance’s neck anyway, his nose brushing Lance’s neck and mouth pressing into his collarbone. “Just don’t drop me,” he mumbles, tightening his grip.

“I won’t,” Lance says, his arm tightening around Keith’s waist. He’s as light as he promised, fits easily and snugly against Lance’s body like he’s meant to, which is an odd and sort of unsolicited thought to have and one Lance dismisses as soon as it comes. He pulls his mask back on and then lifts his hand, shooting across the space in front of them, giving Keith one last reassuring squeeze, and then jumping.  

Keith doesn’t scream. He tightens his grip so that it kind of hurts a little, and Lance feels him mumble a string of words against his neck. His hair is so long it skews Lance’s vision for a second before blowing back away, and then he’s shooting another web and swinging them to another building, and another, and soon Keith relaxes in his arms, finally looking up at New York.

Lance thinks he’s laughing softly. The wind is too strong to tell for sure, but he feels it tickling him, feels the shake of Keith and the smile against his cheek. He laughs too, squeezing tightly, shooting one more web before landing them both squarely on the highest building he can find.

It’s maybe his favorite thing about having these abilities. The view from high up. Lance was always a little scared of heights as a kid. Before she’d died his mother would tease him for his grip on the railings of escalators, on her hand in glass elevators. _Mijo, you are more afraid of falling than the heights. But you won’t fall. And if you do you will catch yourself._

He wonders about that. About the irony of her death. In a plane falling from a thousand miles in the sky. He wonders if somehow his body and brain knew before she died, how she would, and that’s why he was so scared.

But the city makes up for the fear that still sits snugly but small in the pit of his stomach, fear that could be mistaken for anticipation, for adrenaline, for something like excitement, like love. The lights make up for it, twinkling like a thousand stars but brighter. He likes to blur his eyes so the colors of them mesh together to become one, and then shake his head so they are dancing, too.

Keith is quiet beside him, but his side is pressing into Lance’s as he looks out to the city, headphones still dangling from around his neck and a quiet beat of music coming from them. Lance wants to say something, but he likes the silence, too. So he waits.

“I get why,” he says. It’s not a complete thought, the _why_ he means unspoken but known. Why Lance does this every night. Why on most of them he doesn’t want to go home.

He feels a slight tremble from where Keith presses into him. Any other person wouldn’t notice it, but Lance can feel more than most now. Maybe it’s not even at the surface. Maybe Lance is feeling something else.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “Are you?”

It’s an odd question. Not for its reciprocity but for its genuineness. Lance isn’t sure what to answer. He figures its okay to just go for the most honest truth.

“I don’t know.”

Keith hums. “Is it hard, to be saving people all the time? Getting hurt all the time?”

Lance looks at him. He’s prettier than the view has ever been, even on the nights that Lance had stared at it for hours.

“No,” he says. “I think it’d be harder to not. To be able to do what I can, and then choose not to. Wouldn’t that be worse?”

Keith finally looks away from the city and to Lance. “Maybe. But you don’t owe anyone your life, Lance.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Keith asks, but not in an accusatory way. More like he really wants to know. Does he? He’s not so sure. He doesn’t want to die, but he’s also not sure if he would save himself if it meant someone else couldn’t be. He doesn’t think that’s a bad thing, that sort of altruism, if he could call it that. It was certainly not unique to him.

“I just mean you shouldn’t have to get hurt so much,” Keith goes on. “Bullet wounds aren’t a necessity to help people.”

He’s right, of course, but Lance isn’t sure he’d always believe it in the moment. He’d take a bullet for anyone. Because he can. Because for him, it will heal.

“I’ll try not to jump in front of any,” Lance says.

“Yes,” Keith says with a nod. “Please don’t.”

There is a moment of silence, not tense but soft, open, like anything could be said but nothing has to be.  

“Now you can tell everyone spider-man took you on a tour of New York City.”

Keith snorts. “I won’t be doing that.”

“Aw, why not?”

“Who in their right mind would believe me?”

“Loads of people. They’d be extremely jealous.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Definitely not.”

“Definitely yes.”

Keith knocks at Lance with one hip. “I’m gonna push you off this building.”

Lance laughs. “I’d just bring you down with me.”

 

 

Lance lands gently back onto the fire escape of Keith’s building and places Keith gently back to the ground. His arms hover a few moments around his neck before falling back to his sides.

“Thanks for the tour,” Keith says.

“Thanks for the company.”

“For sure,” Keith says. “If you ever, you know, get bored again, my window is always open.”

“That’d be nice,” Lance says. “I’ll see you at school?”

“Yeah. Get home safe?”

“I always do.”

Keith smiles. It’s beautiful in a breathtaking kind of way. “Goodnight, Lance.”

“Goodnight, Keith.”

+

Lance is supposed to be studying, and the library is usually an ideal place for it. So that’s where he is, trying to study, but not studying.

He had a bad habit of tuning into conversations he was not a part of, purely for entertainment reasons and nothing else (sometimes for practical purposes. He’d heard someone complaining about the state of the restrooms at a fair once and had consequently saved himself a line of waiting). He’s listening into one that’s probably happening on the second floor of the library in a study room.

“One second,” a guy is saying. “I have to look up a weird penis.” Lance can also hear the clicking of the laptop as he does exactly this.

“Have you ever ruined a perfectly good manicure because you masturbated before it was fully dry,” someone else interjects, which kind of seems like a non sequitur but is probably relating back to the penis search.

“Well the way that guys masturbate wouldn’t ruin it.” This is a third member of the party.  

“No, it totally would.”

At this point Lance tunes out and back into what he’s supposed to be memorizing. He’s pretty sure you could be careful about it and keep your nails fine and dandy. Then again, he’s never had to try.

This is what he’s thinking about, the exact mechanisms of masturbating without messing up a perfectly good manicure, when Keith, of all people, appears quite abruptly in front of him. Or maybe not abruptly. He looks like he’s been standing there a while, like he’s maybe said Lance’s name a couple times but Lance was too busy thinking about dicks and painted nails to notice.

“Oh,” Lance says, can feel the ‘o’ shape his mouth takes kind of stick a moment in surprise. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Keith says. “Can I sit?”

Lance nods and goes to move his backpack from the chair beside him, which Keith gracefully sits in with a small smile.

“Watcha doing?”

Lance thinks for a moment about telling him what he was thinking about and asking for his opinion on the matter. It is possible or not? Then he thinks about it again and comes to the conclusion that it is probably a topic best left unspoken.

“Studying,” he lies, though tells himself it’s not a complete one. He’s trying. He figures it’s close enough.

“Sounds exciting.”

“You sound like my Aunt Maitea.”

Keith laughs lightly. “Sorry. I’m trying to engage with you.”

“We should engage elsewhere.”

“Sure,” Keith says. “Just gimme half an hour to study.”

“Sounds good,” Lance says, and leaves him be, going back to thinking once again about dicks and manicures.

 

 

His feet dangle from the highest building on the same block as the school. Keith’s keep bumping into him, on purpose or accidentally, he doesn’t know. He doesn't mind either way.

They’d snagged some red vines and orange soda from the corner store down the block. Lance bites the ends of a vine and turns to Keith, blowing at him through it. Keith’s nose wrinkles a little, but he only lazily swats Lance away.

Lance shoves the rest in his mouth, then leans on Keith to get his attention. “So, tell me about yourself.”

“Sounds like the start to a job interview.”

“Maybe I’m looking to hire a sidekick.”

Keith laughs. “You don’t need one.”

“Maybe I want one.”

Keith hums, his right ankle hooking around Lance’s before falling back away.

“But for real,” Lance goes on. “Who and what and where are you?”

“I’m here,” Keith says. “With you. I’m Keith. Human being, I think. Student. Nineteen years old. Resident of New York City. There’s not much else to know.”

“There’s loads to know.”

“Like what?”

Lance shrugs. “The tiny things, I guess. Those things people think don’t matter by themselves but together make up everything a person is. Your favorite color. Favorite person. How many pillows you sleep with. If you believe in aliens. What kinds of things you dream about.”

“It’s red,” Keith says. “My brother, Shiro. Two. Yes. And my parents.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“They’re gone.”

“Oh,” Lance says, feels his heart ache a little. Keith says it like nothing. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Keith says, and presses his foot against Lance’s again, like he’s trying to reassure him it really is. “You?”

“They’re gone, too.”

Keith doesn’t say anything. He just kind of looks at Lance for a moment, like he gets it. Lance has never had someone look at him that way before, like they are completely and totally understanding. Like they can hear his heartbeat through his ribcage and chest. If he tried he’s sure he could hear Keith’s, and that it would be steady and strong.

“And your favorite color? Person? How many pillows do you sleep with. Are aliens real. What do you dream about.”

Lance laughs. “Blue. My Aunt. Five. Definitely yes.”

Keith’s eyes twinkle. “And your dreams?”

Lance might tell him that most of his dreams are nightmares. He might tell him he dreams about dying a lot, about other people dying when he could have saved them. That he dreams about his parents, too. He could, but he doesn’t want the twinkle to fade. They’re almost like stars, Keith’s oddly colored eyes. He still can’t quite place the color.

“I dream about the city. Swinging over it.”

“But you do that when you’re awake.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s because you don’t feel awake while doing it.”

“Maybe,” Lance says, but what he really means is yes. That he doesn’t. He feels awake now, though. Almost too much.  

+

“You’re glowing, dude.”

“What?” Lance is trying to shove several textbooks into his backpack at once. It’s not working. Hunk is choosing not to help.

“You’re literally glowing. Like, I know you have a strict skin care regimen, so your skin is nearly always flawless, but something is different. You’re ethereal.”

“Thank you, Hunk.”

“It’s not a compliment. It’s an observation. Has something happened? A major life event? Mid-life fortune?”

“I’m nineteen, Hunk. It’s not mid-life yet.”

“You are correct. I meant it in a colloquial sense.” Hunk looks at him with giant brown eyes, inspecting him like he does one of the engineering projects scattered around the floor of his bedroom.

“Yeah,” he says, drawing back once he’s finished staring at Lance. “It’s definitely not a trick of the light. Come to think of it, Keith has had the same glow lately. I wonder.”

“Correlation without causation is meaningless, Hunk.”

“Don’t quote Professor Holt to me.”

“Just saying, your observations mean nothing.”

“Yeah, right.” Hunk, from the tone of his voice, is not convinced. “Like I haven’t noticed you guys hit it off even after that debacle of a first introduction.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“You fool yourself.”

He does. He knows it. But Hunk just shakes his head with a laugh, bumping Lance’s shoulder. “I like the glow. I hope it stays.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

“For sure. Pidge is waiting, though, so hurry up.”

The books are not fitting though. Lance chooses to carry them instead. It’s not like they’re that heavy anyway.

+

“You’ve never traveled before?”

“Nope,” Keith says, popping the p in the word. He’s laying beside Lance as they both lay on Keith’s bed, sharing one pillow even though there are two. Lance has become well acquainted with Keith’s bed. He is here more often than he should be, almost every night really, when he’s not out fighting crime and saving damsels.

“Never really had the money or time,” Keith goes on. “Shiro works too much to travel, and I wouldn’t really want to go alone. How about you?”

“Nah,” Lance says. He’s looking for shapes in Keith’s ceiling, sort of as a distraction from the heat of Keith’s body beside him, sort of because he’s finding quite a few of them. “I mean, I think my parents used to a lot, but I don’t remember if they ever took me with them. I’ve always wanted to go someplace far, but I don’t think I’d want to be on a plane to get there.”

“Why not?”

Lance shrugs, closes his eyes to the white of the ceiling. “I don’t like heights.” It’s not exactly true. He doesn’t like the thought of falling.

Keith doesn’t laugh despite the irony of the statement. “But you’re always braving them,” he says, a prompt for Lance to go on, to explain.  

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe it’s not the heights, but the falling.”

Keith hums and turns so his face is kind of shoved into Lance’s shoulder, a little uncomfortably but in a comforting way, somehow. “You’ll catch yourself.”

There’s a knot in Lance’s throat. He thinks about telling Keith he’s heard those words before, as a child. He thinks about telling him he can never get them out of his head, that he hears them in the times he feels like he’s falling apart and that somehow it always keeps him from dismantling completely. He swallows the knot in his throat, squeezes away the burn in his eyes, opens them.

“Yeah. I will.”

He can feel Keith’s smile against him and it makes him smile himself. Keith breathes softly, the air tickling Lance’s neck.

“Hey, stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Breathing.”

“You want me to stop breathing.”

“It tickles.”

Keith shoves at him, but he doesn’t gage how close to the edge of the bed that Lance is, and so Lance goes toppling onto the floor with a noise of affronted surprised. He lifts himself from where his face has smashed into the carpet, glaring at Keith.

“Sorry,” Keith says with a sheepish smile.

Lance laughs and flops over so he’s spread out on Keith’s floor. “This is more comfortable anyway. You’re really missing out.”

“Oh, really?”

“Totally,” Lance says, and turns over with a dramatized sigh of comfort. That’s when he spots it. What is missing on Keith’s desk, the space sad and empty and absent of something very important. He is entirely offended by this.

“Get down from there.” Keith says, because Lance is now on the ceiling.

“No. Not until you apologize.”

“I already did. I’m sorry for pushing you off the bed.”

“No, not for that.”

“For what?”

“For getting rid of me.”

“What are you talking about? You’re right here.”

“Not _me_ me. Little me. Toy me. I know you have one. Where did you put it.”

Keith flushes. Lance pouts to hold in his laughter, crosses his arms as he hangs from Keith’s ceiling.

“I lost it.”

“You did not.”

“Yes I did. Get down. My ceiling is not meant to be walked on.”

“Nope, sorry. Not until you retrieve it from wherever you hid it.”

Keith is silent a moment, contemplating this. Finally, he sighs, clearly defeated, and walks over to his closet, leaning in to to pull out the tiny spider-man. Lance smiles.

“There he is.”

“The way you’re looking at it screams narcissism.” Keith places the figurine back on his desk.

“Nothing wrong with a little self love,” Lance says, jumping down from Keith’s ceiling a little too close to Keith himself, who jumps in surprise. He looks at him with the eyes, the weird weird eyes, tilts his head that way again.

“You’re right,” he says. “Nothing wrong with that at all.”

Lance wonders if it’s a dig at his lack of self regard, if he’s that obvious about it. But Keith moves on quickly, jumping back onto the bed and gesturing for Lance to join him.

“The floor’s not comfortable. You were lying.”

Lance shrugs. “Don’t knock it ‘till you try it,” he says, but joins Keith anyway.

+

On Wednesdays, Lance makes a trip to the grocery store down the block from his apartment. He does most of the shopping so his Aunt won’t have to. She does enough, he thinks. And he kinda likes roaming the aisles, picking out the next week’s worth of food for them. It’s relaxing in its normality.

He’s looking for basmati rice. Aisle ten, he knows, but he’s taking his time getting there. That is when he hears an odd sound, far away but loud somehow still.

It’s maybe four blocks down, if he was gaging it right. It was a crushing sort of noise. If he listened harder, he could maybe hear the voices, too. The yells. He can almost hear the way people are running and pointing their fingers at what’s happened, what is happening, pulling out their phones and calling 911.

And then he’s racing there, before he can even remember telling his feet to move. He is pulling out his mask and the clothes that hide who he is, and he is flinging himself one building to the next until he is there, quicker than he can even realize, like his body had made the decision for him.  

The building is collapsing. Or it’s already collapsed. It’s an art museum, one he’s been to countless times before. He’s seen the paintings, admired the talent and laughed at the oddly painted infants, with adult-like faces on small chubby bodies. He’s been here with Aunt Maitea. He’d wanted to go with Keith next weekend.

There are people screaming. There is a plume of grey everywhere, clouding even his vision. He feels his chest constricting, his feet stalling at he attempts to step forward. He’s afraid. He recognizes the feeling, and he shouldn't have it, not now. Not ever. It’s not fair. He doesn’t have the right to be afraid.

Someone is screaming to help them. That there are people inside. Her child is still inside. Lance can hear the sirens from blocks away, alerted of the collapse but not fast enough to get here in time. He feels like a thousand people are watching, but knows they are too busy to pay mind to him at all. He takes a step forward, and then another, and then he sprints towards the falling building. There are people inside.

He can’t find an opening, so he makes one, flinging a web that sticks and pulling at the rubble to create an entrance. It’s heavy, and his arms burn as he pulls to get it aside, but he puts all the strength he can into it until there’s an opening big enough for him to slip inside. He slides into it, squeezing through the narrow tunnel he’s created and into the collapsed building.

He tunes in to the sounds, searching for people who may still be inside. For a moment he hears nothing, only the crumbling of rubble and the swirls of dust. And then he hears the small sound of a girl.

She is whimpering, crying but quietly, like she’s afraid to make too much noise lest the building collapse atop her more so than it already has. Lance rushes towards her sounds, pulling and pushing rubble to make a clear path to her. It takes too long, but he hears her getting louder with each shove he makes and each step he takes, until he is finally in a small room, standing in front of her.

She is in the corner, tiny and hunched over. Her hair is long and brown, stuck to her face and tangled. Her eyes are red, her cheeks covered in the dust that fills the room. Lance moves towards her. And then he sees what’s happened, and his feet halt, his heart stops.  

There is a chunk of concrete crushing the lower half of her body. She’s to tiny, so it looks so much larger than it might really be, so much bigger than her. She’s to tiny, so quiet, and she’s looking up and seeing him there, just looking at her, and at the sight of him her quiet cries stop, fading into silence.

“Are you here to help me?” She says. Lance almost can’t hear it over the rush in his ears as he looks at her.

He edges closer, closing the space in the room and kneeling beside her. He tears his eyes away from the concrete that presses into her legs, away from the blood that pools around her, a small amount but still there. He looks her in the eyes, blue like his own, and peels of his mask so she can see his, too.

“I’m here to help you,” he says. “Is that okay?”

“Yes,” she says. And then, “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I didn’t mean to leave Mom. I just wanted to see the drawing. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me,” Lance says with a small smile. “Not at all. You’re great company. What’s your name, hm?”

She startles at the sound of something falling at a distance, but Lance keeps a steady hold of his gaze, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Alandra,” she says, looking back to him.

“Alandra. You’re gonna be totally fine, okay? Here’s what I’m going to do. You know that big rock on your legs? I’m super strong, so I’m gonna lift it right off you real quick, and then we can get out of here and go someplace nicer, with better drawings.”

She nods, and Lance smiles, and she smiles back, like she believes in him. It makes Lance afraid, that belief. He takes her hand and squeezes it gently, and then he pulls his mask back on.

“Okay,” he says. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

So Lance crouches, hooking his hands beneath the slab of concrete. He takes a moment to breathe, the air hot against the fabric of his mask, a moment to brace himself. And then he lifts.

She screams. It’s so loud. Louder than anything Lance has ever heard before. It fills his ears and his head, a sound he won’t be able to rid himself of, not ever. She’s screaming and telling him to stop, but he can’t. He has to keep hurting her. He has to lift it away and press into the bleeding parts of her legs as she tells him to please stop because it hurts so much please stop. He has to lift her as gently as he’s able and maneuver them both through a collapsing building. She won’t stop crying. She clings to him so hard it hurts, leaves bruises on skin that won’t even let him keep the marks.

 

 

 

 

 

Her mother is just standing there. Her eyes wide, face dusted grey from the rubble. There are steaks of clear skin where the tears have fallen. Her arms are by her side, like she can’t muster the strength to lift them to hold her daughter. He wants to give the girl in his arms to her. But her legs are crushed.

So he passes her. She does nothing to reach out to him. Only sobs as he hands her to the paramedics who are waiting to take her. They say nothing to him, only yell orders at one another, moving frantically to fix her. He thinks they are too rough with her body, but there’s nothing he can do. He can’t fix her legs. He couldn’t save them to begin with.

He feels numb. He feels stuck in sap. He supposed the metaphor was oddly fitting. Like a bug. Little legs that try so hard but can’t escape. The sap hardens and suffocates him to death. The image is pretty if you didn’t think too hard about it. Sometimes they stick you in sap on purpose, so people can use you as a keychain.

That’s what he feels like. Watching as they wheel her into the ambulance, turning away as it drives away and looking out to the crowd. It is only muffled cries. Loud but in a quiet way. He is a spider stuck in sap. The sap crushed beneath a foot. He needs to leave, to get out of this place and somewhere else far away. He feels like he might hurt himself on purpose, but he doesn’t want to.

It begins to rain, only a slight drizzle at first but then harder. He hates that he loves the rain but it always chooses to when people are crying. He can hear every patter of every drop to the concrete ground, and it overwhelms him in a painful way. His head hurts. He hurts. He needs to go.

 

 

 

 

“Lance?”

He stumbles through the window, nearly falling over in exhaustion, dripping water onto Keith’s lovely carpet and feeling guilty already. He shouldn’t have come here. He didn’t know where else to go. This was it.

“I,” he starts, grimaces at the crack in his voice. He sounds broken. He feels it. “I’m sorry.”

“Lance,” Keith says again. He’s never heard his name spoken quite like that before. Keith is closing the space between them fast, holding onto Lance, hugging him in a way that’s veiled with the purpose of keeping him upright. Lance leans too much of his weight on him, but he’s so tired, and Keith is steady as always.

“You’re so cold,” Keith says, hands moving to rub at his shivering arms, his aching back. He moves his hands up and slips Lance’s mask off, eyes searching his face with worry before he cups his cheeks, too. Keith was never all that warm, Lance had noticed, but that must just mean Lance was near hypothermic. Keith studies him a moment longer, and then he leads him to his bed, sets him down there. “Take your clothes off.”

Lance huffs laughter. It feels entirely inappropriate for the way his chest is aching with something he recognizes as grief, but he can’t help it. It’s a weak laugh, and makes his eyes water slightly. “Third base already?”

Keith shushes him gently, shaking his head with a small smile. It’s a sad kind, and this too makes Lance feel guilty for being the cause of it. He’s always hurting people. He can never seem to get there fast enough to stop it.  

“Not this time,” Keith says, tugging at Lance’s sleeves to get his arms out. “Your clothes are soaking. You’re shivering. You need to get them off.”

Lance nods, helps Keith get his hoodie up over his head. Keith throws it off somewhere, not looking away from Lance. “Pants, too,” he says, turning away to rummage through his drawer. Lance pulls those off too and throws them with the pile. Keith hands him a pair of underwear and looks away. Lance puts those on.

“All decent,” he says, and Keith is back in a second, studying him once again, pushing him to the mattress so his back is against it. He watches Keith pull his shirt off over his head and then his jeans, too, before lifting the comforter and slipping in beside Lance.

And then he’s pulling Lance in, holding him so their chests are flush together, throwing one leg across Lance’s lower hip and tangling Lance’s leg with his other. He’s warm everywhere. He doesn’t seem to feel the chill of Lance’s skin at all.

“Better?” He says, so close Lance feels the vibration of his words through his chest.

“Yeah,” Lance says softly. Keith presses closer still and blinks up at him. Lance almost feels the flutter of his eyelashes against his skin.

“What happened?” He asks.

Lance bites his lip and looks away briefly, then back at Keith, who’s waiting with the kind of patience only the very best people in Lance’s life have afforded him. This, somehow, pushes him to speak.

“There was an accident,” he says, dull and dead-sounding. He sighs and pulls at Keith, wanting him closer and feeling bad for it. Keith doesn’t mind. He lets Lance steal the warmth from his body until the both of them are pink-cheeked and warm, and Lance has the courage to speak again.

“I didn’t get there in time. The building just… it just collapsed, and I couldn't get in fast enough.” He pictures it, himself lifting boulders to make a path. He can hear her still, getting louder as he gets closer. “Her legs… Keith. Her legs were crushed. She screamed while I took it off of her. She wouldn’t stop screaming.”

“Lance.”

“She was so small. She’d probably come up to my knees standing, and now, I don’t even know if she ever will again. She didn’t even look real, Keith. She was so pale. She looked like something out of a dream.”

“It’s not your fault. You saved her life. No one could have done that except you.”

“She was in so much pain.”

“But she’ll heal. She gets the chance to. That’s because of you.”

A tear escapes and runs down his cheek, dripping silently to the pillow. Then another. And Lance is crying when he never meant to, but he can’t help them coming.  

He cries until he is exhausted and numb, until his face is a splotchy red and his lips are puffy and his nose stuffed. He cries until he can’t anymore, until all he can feel is an emptied chest and Keith’s fingertips trailing over his bare shoulder blade.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” He says.

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

“You can always stay here.”

Lance hums. He doesn't know what to say to an offer like that. He looks at Keith, is struck again by what he still hasn’t quite figured out.

“What color are your eyes?”

“What?”

“It’s just, I can’t tell. I think about it a lot, your eyes and the color. You know how we can only see the barest portion of the electromagnetic spectrum? Even bees can see more of it than we can. I feel like whatever color they are, people can’t see it, like it only exists on you.”

“You can see more than others, Lance. Maybe that’s why. They’re just blue.”

“It can’t be that, though,” Lance says. “Because then you wouldn’t be the only one with impossibly colored eyes, but you are. They aren’t just blue. They’re like, purple and blue and green and black, all at the same time. It’s weird.”

“Lance, they’re just eyes.”

“They’re not.”

“You should sleep.”

Lance hums. He almost smiles, too. Somehow Keith can do that, make him smile after something like today. “I’m tired,” he agrees.

“I know. It’s okay. Sleep.”

“M’kay.”

So he does. And he doesn’t dream of anything.

+

It was structurally unsound, the news says. The building was bound to collapse at any moment, but nobody knew, so nobody took precautions. People were being sued. Companies were going bankrupt.

“That’s crazy,” Hunk is saying. “How could they not know? Someone should have caught it honestly.”

“Yeah,” Lance says, a little distracted, by what he’s not entirely sure.

“Hey,” Hunk says, putting a hand on Lance’s shoulder in that reassuring way he does. “You good?”

Lance isn’t so sure of the answer to that. He’s not so sure but for the first time in a while he’s okay with not knowing.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

Hunk kind of smiles at that, a little worried and a little like he’s sad, his hand falling away from where it’s rested gently on Lance’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to,” he says.

“Yeah.” He’s right, of course. Hunk is mostly always right. “Wanna grab sushi?”

“Definitely,” Hunk says. “Just don’t stack up on the green plates please. They’re the most expensive.”

“No promises,” Lance says. But he won’t. He doesn’t even want sushi right now, only really wants the company.

+

Lance has gotten pretty good at dodging angry fists. This one is coming towards his place pretty slowly, relatively speaking of course, so it gives him a little time to think about things as he moves out of the way.

He’s mostly thinking about Keith. This isn’t exactly new, but the time he spends doing it seems to have risen exponentially since that first time he crawled into his room. Keith and his eyes, which he hadn’t answered the question as to what color they were, and his hair that he sometimes huffed at to get out of his face and the way he hummed when no one is listening. Keith and how he looked focused on a chemistry problem, the way he twisted his back to crack every thirty minutes. Keith and his gummy smile, the wrinkled space between his brows when he was worried or confused. The way he left his window open every night for Lance to come through. How he doesn’t even startle when Lance does, only looks to him with a warm smile before going back to his work, but making space for Lance on the bed beside him.

Lance is so caught up in it that he doesn’t see the man swinging another fist towards him. It hits him in the jaw, makes a cracking sound that is concerning but that Lance can’t worry about right now. His knees give out on him, more out of exhaustion from the day than the hit itself, and the guy is grabbing him, his fingers gripping him hard enough to leave bruises. He’s too busy prying him off that he almost doesn’t notice him pull out a gun with the other hand. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but Lance has learned from the experience and goes straight for it, shooting a web that catches onto the barrel and pulling it away so it goes flying across the room.

The man looks a little startled, his hand hanging empty in the air. And then he looks more angry, which makes him go for Lance like some primal animal. Lance dodges him easily, shoots another web as he tumbles to the floor, and effectively sticks him there.

“Comfortable?” He asks, tilting his head to the side as he does.

“Fuck you,” the man spits.

“Prefer not to, Buddy.”

He’s mumbling curses, trying in vain to escape the sticky mess that traps him to the floor like a bug in a spider’s web. Lance chooses to let him. He won’t be able to get out from it, no matter how hard he struggles. He’ll let the police know when they arrive how they can. It mostly required some rigorous scissor work.

He leaves then, grabbing a bouquet of roses on the way out and leaving change for it at the counter. The clerk had long since fled. Lance might tell him on the way out, if he can find him, that all was well. Burglar  apprehended.

He brings his face to the flowers. They don’t smell like much, which kind of disappoints him, but he supposes it’ll have to do.

 

 

“Hey.”

The window was already open, even though it’s cold out, and had been drizzling not five minutes ago. Droplets have collected on the sill, and Lance carefully steps over it so as not to disturb them.

Keith looks up from his books. He’s huddled up in a giant sweatshirt, blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. “Oh, hey,” he says, smiling at Lance before it turns to a slight frown. There’s that wrinkle again, the one between his brows. Lance wants to press his thumb to it. But he can’t move his feet from where they stand by the window. He came meaning to tell Keith something. Now he’s not sure he can.

“Are you okay?” Keith asks.

“Totally,” Lance says. He does feel a little light headed, probably on account that he hadn’t eaten all day and stopped about four robberies and a mugging.

“What’s that?”

At first Lance doesn’t know what he’s referring to, but then he remembers the roses in his hands. He lifts them up. They’re a little floppy and sad looking now, probably from the trip here spent swinging from one building to another, but maybe the sentiment will still come across.

“Flowers,” he says. “For you.”

“Oh,” Keith says, and gets up from the bed. He leaves his blanket there, letting it fall to the floor as he walks to Lance. He looks warm in his sweater, cheeks a ruddy pink, and smiles again as he takes the flowers from Lance’s hands, gently, like he’s afraid to mess them up. Lance’s heart does a little spin in his chest.

“Thank you,” he says, bringing the flowers to his chest before placing them atop his desk. “But I actually meant this.” He touches Lance’s jaw, with even lighter fingers than he had used with the flowers. It doesn’t hurt, but Lance finds he can’t quite breathe anyway.

“It’s just a bruise.”

“It looks like it hurts,” Keith says. He leans forward into Lance’s space. His eyes are huge as he looks at him. “Let me see the rest of them.”

“What?”

“Your bruises. I want to see them.”

Lance takes a moment to understand and process his request. He can’t seem to come up with an adequate response, someway to refuse him. Maybe because he doesn’t really want to. He can only nod and pull off his ratted hoodie, watching Keith’s hands work to help him pull the sleeves off and drop it to the floor.

He looks down. At where Keith’s fingers graze over his bare chest and down his arms. They’re fading right in front of his eyes, a rainbow of color painted onto his skin, erased after mere minutes. Sometimes, he wishes the marks would stay. He wishes he had scars to remember the worst parts by. He wonders if he’s a masochist, wonders if he deserves the things he wants. He wishes he did. Maybe he does.

Keith presses his fingers into the spots that are fading, and it hurts, a tender ache in the shape of his touch. But then it’s gone and it’s just Keith, and it feels almost like Keith’s what healed him. His hands are firm still, like he’s holding him in place so he won’t float away. Lance doesn’t want him to let go. He feels like he would, if he did.

“I won’t,” Keith says, softly and like he can read his mind, or like Lance had said aloud what he hadn’t meant to. It warms him. Everything about Keith is warm and beautiful. Everything about Keith eases the weight on his shoulders. He’s trying to keep the weight of the whole sky from collapsing in on him, crushing him like a bug under the sole of a careless walkerby, but now he doesn’t have to.

“Keith,” Lance says.

“Hm?”

He is so close now. Close enough that when he speaks their lips almost brush. The hairs of his arms rise. His stomach flutters.

“Can I…”

“Yes,” Keith breathes, before he can even finish the question, and before Lance can even act on his answer, closes the space himself.

He’s warm. The fabric of his sweater soft against Lance’s bare chest. Lance wants to take it off him, but he settles for peeking his hands beneath the hem and spreading his fingers across the small of his stomach. Keith makes a noise, small, that sends a rush through Lance’s stomach, makes him press closer still.

“I wanna take you to The Home Depot,” he mumbles.

Keith laughs gently, his breath tickling at Lance’s lips. “What?”

But Lance doesn’t have the time to explain. He doesn’t have the time to do anything but kiss Keith. Again and again and again. Until his lips are sore and his cheeks hurt from smiling too much, the bruise on his jaw aching even though it should have healed by now. He kisses him until they are too tired to kiss more. Until Keith instead peppers feather-like kisses across his eyelids, his forehead and nose, every part of his face he has never been kissed before.

He’s falling, falling, falling. From the highest building in the world. The wind is strong around him, his heart beating stronger. He’s falling, but he’s not afraid of the feeling.

 

  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s already tried two hospitals, and neither had found the name he was looking for. Third time's the charm, he supposed. And besides, he’s got good company. Keith hasn’t let go of his hand except for when he goes up to the desk, with a small reassuring smile and a little wave of the hand.

Lance still hasn’t figured out the color of his eyes. He figures at this point it’s a mystery best left unsolved.

“Hi,” Lance says to the nurse at the front desk. “I’m looking for an Alandra. I don’t know her last name, but we were in the accident together?”

“One moment,” the woman says. She looks busy, doesn’t really give Lance a second look until several minutes later. When she does, its with passivity, her eyes looking elsewhere and already on to the next task.

“She’s on the fourth floor, room 217.”

“Thank you,” Lance says. The nurse only smiles quickly at him. Lance turns around, walking back to Keith, who rises from the seat he’s taken in the waiting room.

“She’s here,” Lance says. He grabs at Keith’s hands, playing with his fingers nervously. His chest aches thinking about going up to the room.

“Go to her,” Keith says, squeezing Lance’s fidgeting fingers. “I’ll wait for you here.”

“Thank you,” Lance says. He leans forward, kisses Keith gently, once on the lips, another on each cheek. “For coming with me.”

“Of course,” Keith says, cheeks pink and mouth smiling. “Say hello from me.”

 

 

He just sort of stands outside the door for a while. Pacing nervously. He didn’t bring anything as a gift, which he should have but was too nervous to think of. He could get a pack of candy from the vending machine, but it might be an odd thing to give, and he’d probably eat it before he worked up the courage to walk into the room.

He takes one more deep breath, thinks about Keith’s hands in his own, squeezing gently, thinking about Hunk’s hand on his shoulder, Aunt Maitea’s kiss to his forehead every morning and night.

He knocks on the door. A voice speaks from inside, young and bright and beautiful, telling him to come in. He brought his mask with him, and holds it in his pocket, fingers tangled in the fabric. He’ll leave it with her, he thinks, underneath the pillow where no one will know it’s there but her. It was time for an upgrade anyhow.

He steps inside.

 

**Author's Note:**

> lmao i got kind of lazy if u couldn't telllll i'm sorry about that i will maybe come back and expand/edit this in the near future (im out of school yeet i have loads of time but im just jfdlsaj so lazy) 
> 
> does the home depot exist in new york? 
> 
> also,, ik a lot was left unresolved in terms of lance's questionable inner-workings of the mind, but he'll be aok dw 
> 
> anywhomst thank u so much for reading! love u lots <3 
> 
> p.s. do let me k if there are any majorly horrible grammatical errors/awkwardness, as i spent minimal effort on this entire thing, but still want it to be, ya know, written semi-decently 
> 
> hmu @petalloso.tumblr.com i'd love to chat wit uuu


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